Aug 06 2025

Psychopomp by Maria Dong

I fell head over heels in love with Maria Dong’s genre-bending debut Liar, Dreamer, Thief, so when Ms Dong herself reached out asking if I’d like a copy of her follow-up novel, the more sci-fi Psychopomp, I was absolutely gasping to say yes.

Psychopomp has lots of the same themes that LDT did, tho set on a planet and moon far, far away in space and, presumably, time. There’s an unreliable narrator suffering from mental illness who feels as tho she’s been abandoned by her struggling parents. Employment is a precarious situation, and the threat of betrayal by others is harder to process when you can’t trust your own facilities. But whereas LDT stays firmly rooted in logic to present its gorgeously satisfying puzzle box of a story, Psychopomp leaves several important questions unanswered, and I’m not entirely sure why.

The story itself is narrated by Young, a prison laborer on the moon Hibiscus. She was caught stealing on the connected planet Ung-Nyeo, and sent to the lunar penal colony to work off her debt to society. The prison actually isn’t terrible as far as incarceration goes, tho it does have big company town energy. Everything is expensive, and everything is charged to the account that the prisoner eventually has to pay off, if they stand any chance of making it back planetside. It’s a very accurate portrayal of the trajectory of the prison-industrial complex under late-stage capitalism, as is the entire politico-economic setting.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/06/psychopomp-by-maria-dong/

Aug 05 2025

Monstress Vol 9: The Possessed by Marjorie M Liu & Sana Takeda

Would I read this comic if it weren’t for the fact that it’s nominated for a Hugo almost every year? Absolutely not. Tho apparently it was not nominated last year (I’ve heard that Vol 8 was Not Great) and I skipped the Hugos the year before, so missed reading the last two books. Not that it mattered much, since this collection starts with Maika, Ren and Kippa waking from a year-long coma and readers getting the closest thing to a recap I’ve encountered in this series so far.

Anyway, Maika’s dad now has Zinn implanted in him after removing the monster from her body. Unsurprisingly, it’s not going well for him. The removal seemed to have killed Maika, but her body was taken away and she was subsequently resuscitated. Now that she’s awake and (mostly) healed again, she’s ready to make political allies and figure out a way to get Zinn back so that, together, they can save the world.

At least, I think that’s what it’s about.

I’m ngl, this is one of those comic books where I just grab the safety rail and try to enjoy the ride. As is customary in my review of each volume, I have to say that I don’t necessarily understand a lot of what’s going on, just because there’s So Much Happening to So Many People with So Little Explanation. At least this book was coherent in and of itself, not something I could say about several of the earlier books in the series. The time jump is thus very useful for giving readers a fairly fresh slate to work with. Even if you missed the last two books, like I did, it doesn’t super matter, as the underlying plot elements are still pretty much the same: Maika’s on her world-saving quest while grappling with her relationship with Zinn and her family and lovers; Kippa is the moral heart of the story, and Ren is adorable and mysterious and badass (so, a typical cat, lol.) If you enjoy these elements in your horror-fantasy then you will most likely enjoy this book, too.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/05/monstress-vol-9-the-possessed-by-marjorie-m-liu-sana-takeda/

Aug 04 2025

Tantalizing Tales — August 2025 — Part One

Happy August, readers! My schedule has already been thrown into a tizzy, but I’m hoping that things smooth out a little bit before back to school and the start of the Arsenal season later this month. In the meantime, let’s look at some awesome shorter books coming out this week — I love a short book almost as much as I love a short king, lol — beginning with the inescapable topics addressed in screenwriter Jon Raymond’s latest novel God And Sex.

Set in a present day Pacific Northwest ravaged by global warming, this novel follows a writer of high-end spiritual texts named Arthur. He falls in love and begins an affair with Sarah, the wife of a newfound close friend. When an environmental disaster threatens Sarah’s life, Arthur frantically turns to prayer to save her. The mystifying event that ensues challenges his understanding of God and the divine.

As the audacious title suggests, Arthur must examine his relationships to carnality and spirituality and how the two intertwine. While this is a book about faith and religion, it’s also very much an examination of love, friendship, art, ecology and climate change. Plus, it comes in at under 300 pages, which I have to say is very much a draw for me recently.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/04/tantalizing-tales-august-2025-part-one/

Aug 01 2025

An Interview with J.T. Ellison, Author of Last Seen

We’ve been slowly getting back into the habit of publishing author interviews over here at The Frumious Consortium, and are so pleased to be able to bring you this insightful conversation with J T Ellison in conjunction with her novel Last Seen, publishing today! This latest standalone page-turner is a psychological thriller that examines family bonds and the connection between truth and memory, as a woman’s life falls apart once she realizes that it’s been built on a foundation of lies.

Hailey James is about to lose her job and her marriage. When her beloved father is admitted to hospital, she can’t imagine how much worse it could get… until she learns that her mother did not die in a car crash when Hailey was six. Hailey’s mom was murdered, and her father has been lying to her about it this entire time.

Unable to let the past lie, Hailey travels from her childhood hometown of Marchburg, Virginia to chase a lead in Brockville, Tennessee. Brockville seems like the perfect small town, but Hailey’s investigations could uncover the chilling darkness at its heart. Some might even be willing to kill to stop her from exposing the unsettling truth behind Brockville’s charming facade.

Read on to learn more about this twisty novel and its author!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/01/an-interview-with-j-t-ellison-author-of-last-seen/

Jul 31 2025

The Hunger And The Dusk, Vol 1 by G Willow Wilson, Chris Wildgoose & MsassyK

Oh hurray, a new high fantasy property in comics! It does feel a little Dungeons & Dragons meets World Of Warcraft but that is honestly a-okay given that that’s basically what most fantasy is nowadays.

Orcs and humans have been at war for years, as they struggle over land. The orcs require fields on which to graze their livestock, whereas the humans want those same fields to raise crops. But now, with another danger looming over them, the two factions are forced to form an alliance in order to survive.

This danger comes in the form of the fast-moving, ever-hungry humanoids known as the Vangol, who come from over the sea to kill every orc and human in their path. In order to solidify the alliance, the high-born Orc healer Lady Tara Icemane will join the small but fierce mercenary company Last Men Standing. Led by Callum Battlechild, LMS were chosen after Callum earned the respect of Tara’s cousin, Overlord Troth, on the battlefield. Callum is less than confident of his company’s ability to ensure Tara’s safety, especially given how much larger and better equipped the other mercenary bands that protect humankind are, but Troth believes in his valor and honor more than in numbers or wealth.

As Tara travels with her new companions, Troth must return home to face the politically-arranged marriage that has sundered any hopes he and Tara had for their own union. Granted, her own lowly political status in the success-oriented culture of the orcs put paid to their marriage prospects after her parents’ death. There’s really very little for her back in heir homelands… tho that doesn’t make the prospect of travelling with humans seem all that much better. Worse, the danger posed by the Vangols is very real, as she and the LMS learn more about their enemies, at great risk to themselves.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/31/the-hunger-and-the-dusk-vol-1-by-g-willow-wilson-chris-wildgoose-msassyk/

Jul 30 2025

Hugo Awards 2025: Best Poem

Continuing with our coverage of the 2025 Hugo Awards is my survey of the poetry finalists, a category that debuts this year as a trial balloon for inclusion in future WorldCons. Personally, I think it’s a great idea for an ongoing category, especially as it encourages writers to continue experimenting with form and, hopefully, discipline, while still telling amazing stories.

All this is exemplified in my personal favorite of this year’s nominees, Marie Brennan’s A War of Words. It was originally published in Strange Horizons, but has since been collected with several other of the author’s shorter works into The Atlas Of Anywhere. The poem works in capturing the rhythm of both battle and loss, with the necessary economy only underscoring the surprisingly universal theme. Frankly, I think it’s brilliant, and head and shoulders above the rest of its competition.

Which isn’t to say that the rest are at all bad! Angela Liu’s there are no taxis for the dead is much more imagist in its leanings, as it discusses grief and spectral homecomings. It is, perhaps, the most mainstream of these poems, as it reads easily as a literary metaphor of dealing with the loss of a loved one.

My third favorite was Oliver K. Langmead’s Calypso, a book that I’ve previously discussed at the link. This sci-fi novel in verse is the longest and probably most experimental of the nominees, spanning centuries of both in-universe time and our-universe pages. I felt that it had both pros and cons — the most pertinent of which being that I felt that some of its parts would have been better as just regular prose — but overall it was a worthy experiment and one I hope more authors will attempt.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/30/hugo-awards-2025-best-poem/

Jul 29 2025

Counting Backwards by Jacqueline Friedland (EXCERPT)

We have a timely treat for you today, readers, with an excerpt from Jacqueline Friedland’s Counting Backwards. Told in two alternating narratives bound together by a shocking parallel of issues — including reproductive rights and society’s expectations of women and mothers — this novel is a compelling reminder that progress is rarely a straight line and always hard-won.

New York, 2022. Jessa Gidney is trying to have it all: a high-powered legal career, a meaningful marriage and hopefully, one day, a child. But when her professional ambitions come up short and Jessa finds herself at a turning point, she leans into her family’s history of activism by taking on pro bono work at a nearby detention center. There she meets Isobel Perez, a young mother fighting to stay with her daughter. As she gets to know Isobel, an unsettling revelation about Isobel’s health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility… one that shockingly has ties to her own family.

Virginia, 1927. Carrie Buck is an ordinary young woman in the center of an extraordinary legal battle at the forefront of the American eugenics conversation. From a poor family, she was only six years old when she first became a ward of the state. Uneducated and without any support, she spends her youth dreaming about a future separate from her exploitative foster family, unaware of the ripples that her small country life will soon have on an entire nation.

As Jessa works to assemble a case against the prison and the crimes that she believes are being committed there, she discovers the landmark Supreme Court case involving Carrie Buck as well as its shocking implications for the one before her now. Her connection to the case, however, is deeper and much more personal than she ever knew, sending her down new paths that will leave her forever changed and determined to fight for these women, no matter the cost.

Read on for a tension-filled excerpt from Jessa’s personal life!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/29/counting-backwards-by-jacqueline-friedland-excerpt/

Jul 28 2025

Star Trek: Lower Decks ― Warp Your Own Way by Ryan North & Chris Fenoglio

As a bad Trekker with little time for TV, I have yet to watch a single episode of Lower Decks, tho it was certainly top of list for me even before I read this astonishing book. I figured that this graphic novel would be a great introduction to the series but was thoroughly unprepared for exactly how mind-bending — and heart-wrenching — this story would turn out to be.

And you have to understand, I adore fiction that plays with the conventions of storytelling. If you’re not into that, this might not be for you. But if you are, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys when Star Trek plays with time and space, if you don’t mind a lot of non-linear narrative, and especially if you love a little good fan service, then you absolutely need a copy of this book.

Another note: I read this via the Hugo 2025 packet, so my copy was a hyperlinked pdf that I read on my PC, which is pretty much the only format I would recommend reading this in aside from physical. It might work on some tablets too, but the hyperlinks are crucial to the story flow, so make sure that any digital copy you get is something you can interact with in that fashion.

So to the story! This is essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure format revolving around the crew of the USS Cerritos, and particularly Lieutenant Junior Grade Beckett Mariner. After a night of hard partying, she’s not particularly enthused about having to get out of bed on her day off. Readers help her figure out what caffeinated beverage she wants from the replicator and then who she wants to bother/spend time with. Things start going haywire shortly after.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/28/star-trek-lower-decks-%e2%80%95-warp-your-own-way-by-ryan-north-chris-fenoglio/

Jul 25 2025

Tantalizing Tales — July 2025 — Part Four

This is the first time I’ve had to write a Tantalizing Tales Part Four, dear readers! I did confirm with a publicist friend that it has been an unusually busy summer this year, though neither we nor the BlueSky brain trust could figure out why. Very happy to hear your theories, if you have them!

First up for our roundup column is the book with my favorite cover this week, Rebecca Danzenbaker’s Soulmatch. In a world where your past lives determine your future, a sharp-witted girl confronts a major twist of destiny, embroiling her in a high-stakes game of danger, corruption and heartbreak.

Two hundred years after World War III, the world is at peace, all thanks to the soul-identification system. Every eighteen-year-old must report to the government to learn about their past lives, in a terrifying process known as kirling. Good souls leave the institute with their inheritance, a career path and, if they’re lucky, a soulmate. Bad souls leave in handcuffs.

It’s a nerve-wracking ordeal for Sivon who, given her uncanny ability to win every chess match, already suspects that her soul isn’t normal. Turns out that she was right to worry. Sivon’s results stun not only her but the entire world, making her the object of public scrutiny and anonymous threats.

Saddled with an infuriating and off-limits bodyguard, Sivon is thrust into a high-stakes game where souls are pawns and rules don’t exist. As the deaths keep mounting, Sivon must decipher friend from foe while protecting her heart against impossible odds. One wrong move could destroy the future lives of everyone Sivon loves. She can’t let that happen, even if they’ll never love her back.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/25/tantalizing-tales-july-2025-part-four/

Jul 24 2025

We Called Them Giants by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans & Clayton Cowles

Ooh, look, a standalone graphic novel from one of my favorite creative teams! And, interestingly, an object lesson in how to write a book that doesn’t explain everything yet still manages to feel both satisfying and complete, which I’ll delve into more later on in this review.

This is also my first review of the Graphic Novels slate for the 2025 Hugos. I’m still torn as to whether I want to do a complete roundup column for the category, but I can safely say that this was not my favorite of the bunch.

Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t good! Stephanie Hans’ art is spectacular as always, as is Clayton Cowles’ lettering. The Blah Blah Blah motif was a nice moment of levity in an otherwise grim book that essentially centers around the premise of unexpected compassion in the midst of devastation.

Essentially, Lori wakes up one day and discovers that everyone has disappeared. As a foster child, she’s used to feeling abandoned but still feels an intense sense of relief when she encounters Annette, a schoolmate with a much more optimistic outlook on life. Until, that is, they discover that food supplies are unexpectedly low and electricity no longer works either. Together, they go questing for food and safety, in a world that was already hostile to teenage girls even in times of abundance.

Unsurprisingly, the world has devolved into the standard dystopia of violent gangs taking the center of power, with nonconformists like Lori and Annette ekeing out an existence on the margins. The big difference here is that oversized wolves hunt the remaining humans, forcing our heroes to edge ever closer to capture by the local gang. Until, that is, someone shows them another way.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/24/we-called-them-giants-by-kieron-gillen-stephanie-hans-clayton-cowles/